Author: Ken Bradford

The success of any business website is determined by how well information is delivered to potential customers. Custom business website design allows a business to have personality and insures that important business information is left with visitors. Let’s look at 5 ways custom business website design helps beat competition.

Effective business website design will leave a lasting first impression

Studies have shown that website first impressions are at least 94% design related. Visually appealing business websites make good use of color and typography. Custom web design presents quality web content that is organized, current and relevant to one idea per page. Web design that includes a large amount of flash, pop-ups and other distractions can’t communicate with search engines and is quite annoying to website visitors. Custom website design ensures that everything works.

Effective business website design must establish trust in an instant

A business is only as good as the owner and the people who run it. Custom website design allows you to dedicate a portion of the website to the people who contribute to the success and services of the business. Adding that personal touch makes you and your business more approachable. Visitors see a website as being more trustworthy when they can put a face or faces with it.

Custom business website design creates a distinctive look and feel

A lot of business websites are designed by using the same template as used by thousands of other businesses. There is certainly nothing unique or distinctive about this web design strategy. The success or failure of a business website often lies in the presentation. Investing in a professionally designed business website will help replicate your brand’s in-store feel or create a new look and feel that matches your brand’s identity.

Custom business website design delivers a better user experience

Generic template-based business websites can be quite boring and usually don’t offer the user experience many visitors and customers want. Custom web design takes the guesswork out of navigation and load times. A custom website also allows web design to be customized and tailored for the right target market. The right user experience that works for your brand is one uniquely different from what your competition has to offer.

When potential customers type a phrase or question into that search bar they are looking for specific information to help them answer a question or solve a problem. They will rarely cycle through multiple pages of search results to find the needed information. An SEO strategy based on relevant information and strong web content will help insure that your business website appears on the first or second page of search results.

Custom business website design must deliver much more that a beautiful website. An effective business website must have a unique look, be user-friendly and deliver relevant information that meets the individual needs of your website visitors. By delivering what current and potential customers need, a custom business website can help your business race ahead of any competition.

What type of experience does your business website create? If you need help in making sure that your website delivers the right user-experience to the right target market, please get in touch.

When potential business website visitors enter a specific word or phrase in that search box, they want to find a business website that will solve their problem or answer a specific question. In order to stop being faceless, professional website development must focus on presenting the human side of your business.

Cut the jargon

Many “About” pages of small business websites only talk about the degrees or specific training the owner or manager of the business has obtained. There is seldom any discussion about who the owner or manager actually is and what his/her interests are. Too often, much of the website content on business websites is industry-specific jargon that makes the business sound too serious and stuffy. Quality web content should be written the same way you would speak to someone in a face-to-face meeting.

Web content to help people relate

Potential customers who love animals will most likely be impressed by a small business owner who volunteers at the local animal shelter once a week. Those who enjoy spending time with the grand kids can immediately connect with a small business owner who takes pride in the same activity. People enjoy doing business with people they can relate to. They are not concerned about how many degrees you have. They want to know what type person you are and how your talents and interests can best serve their needs.

Seems like everyone thinks they are a designer. Believe me, just being able to throw a couple of photos on a pre-formatted free template does not in any way make you a website designer. There is a big difference between having somebody who thinks they have good taste lead your business website design and an actual website developer who does it day-in-day-out for a living. Let’s review three important elements of good business website design.

A business website without a strategy will likely fail

Many businesses, both large and small, think that just building a new website will improve traffic and increase sales. Newness alone will not improve anything. Your business website must be integrated with the rest of your marketing strategy. You must clearly define your target audience and determine just how you will attract them to your site. You must also clearly define what you want people to do once they arrive at your business website.

Trust an expert website developer

To achieve a high level of success with your business website you must involve the talents of a professional designer with a background in user experience. When it comes to doing a good job the best website designers look beyond aesthetics and plan for interactivity. If your website is not designed well to begin with it won’t get used.

In today’s visual environment, many photographers design their business websites with standard templates and often restrict the website to mostly text. No matter what type of photographer you are, your photography website must be your business card in the digital world. Here are a few very important things you should consider when designing your photographer website to reach potential customers.

Photographer website design must focus on simplicity

You must always approach website design and development from the customer’s point of view. Most people have the tendency of putting more on a business website than is necessary. Whether you’re creating your first photographer website or remodeling an existing one, you’ll want to tackle the job in simple phases. Your main focus must be a clean design with simple navigation and ease of use.

Overall photographer website design must match your specialty

Visitors come to your business website looking for information on which to make a decision. Your goal is to make the best possible first impression. Most business owners want to say too much. You want to provide visitors with just enough informative content to move them to the next phase of your website sales funnel. Keeping it simple offers the best opportunity to move your visitors closer to becoming customers.

Many small business owners procrastinate about starting the development of a business website, but once the site is up and running, they seem to want instant results. The most important thing to understand about online marketing is that there is no such thing as a quick Return-On-Investment (ROI). Here are some things to consider when developing website expectations.

In website development there is no second chance for a first impression

First impressions are a big deal. The first few seconds of website interaction go a long way in influencing the opinions and decisions of potential customers. Your visitors must be able to answer the following questions within the first five seconds of landing on your website:

Website marketing requires building search engine trust

How long does it take for you to really trust someone? Search engines use trust factors to actually apply a value of how trustful a site really is. Websites with unique content that are updated regularly are considered more trustworthy. The more trustful a site is the more likely its articles will be ranked higher in the search.

Brand identity design must be clear and consistent

As a small business owner, competing for the same customers as all other small businesses, your brand’s identity and appearance is as important as the products or services you offer. A brand is the essence of the business and is the promise of the quality of products or services that will be delivered. Many people refer to a brand as a logo, but it is much bigger than that.

Understanding the relationship between a brand, an identity, and a logo

A “brand” or “branding” is the perceived image of a business in the minds of customers that allows them to make the decision to choose one product or service over another. Brands are normally developed over time through advertisements, word of mouth recommendations, and real-life experiences by consumers.

A company’s “identity” is every visual component necessary to form a cohesive and consistent business image. Visual devices used to leverage brand elements can include packaging, letterhead, business cards, and all other marketing collateral. Today, most people don’t even know where to find their copy of the Yellow Pages, so they go online to find businesses. In order to compete in the marketplace, every small business must have an effective business website. Web sites serve as a very useful form of inexpensive advertising.

A “logo” is a simple, recognizable and memorable graphic design that helps customers discover, share and remember a company’s brand. People recognize and relate to images faster than text. A badly thought up logo can harm your business, but a carefully designed logo will communicate the worth of your business or product.

Brand identity design must make an emotional connection with customer touchpoints

Creating a unique brand identity for your business can be a challenge, but with some professional advice it can bring big dividends in your brand’s value. The elements of your brand design strategy must focus on every customer touchpoint.

In these days of tight budgets, professional graphic design work is undervalued in many small businesses. Whether it’s a business website or the logo in an email signature, potential customers will judge a business quickly based on visual appeal alone. Let’s look at a few ways graphic design impacts your business.

Graphic design helps build your company image

Professional graphic design helps make your company logo recognizable, memorable and ready to use in different media. Professional quality graphic design gives a small business credibility – and that’s priceless. No matter how good a product or service is, with poor design, no one will hang around the company’s website or keep an email long enough to find out.

Graphic design can impact success of a business.

Graphic design is critical in effective website design

Photos and other elements of graphic design help make your business website stand out over the competition. A professional graphic designer will use precise colors, typeface and mood for everything. This design consistency allows existing and potential customers to have the same experience visiting a website as they do reading a company brochure.

Graphics keep collateral materials from becoming boring

There are lots of boring letterheads, brochures and business cards floating around the country today. The use of design and color makes mood and emotion play into your products or services. People collect a lot of business cards, so use graphics to make people notice yours. Graphic design is much more than making things look pretty; effective graphics should entice and persuade.

Graphic design can make your packaging memorable

When we speak of packaging, we don’t necessarily have to be speaking about the box your product is shipped in. Packaging goes far beyond that. The graphics used to package your advertising through the mail or design your discount coupons are just a few of the ways packaging can make memories for your customers. Quality graphic design has longevity.

Graphic design will help you to be remembered first in social media

A well-worded text-only post may stand out, but a beautiful graphic image will catch more eyes and turn more heads. Graphic design produces visual aids to help communicate your ideas. These images can transmit ideas that cannot be expressed in words alone.

It is important for all graphic design elements to remain consistent throughout all your marketing campaigns. Graphics help your customers see you as an expert in your field because they have more to remember.

Graphic design is my business, so contact me today and I will help you design graphics that will have a positive impact on clients, vendors, and employees.